For what we see now is the visible formation of a large cool pool in the North Atlantic. One that appears to be developing due to an increasingly rapid rate of Greenland melt. One that may be setting up atmospheric conditions for the age of storms that Hansen has feared could arise. An event resulting from a rampant human fossil fuel emission and a related very rapid injection of heat into the Earth System.

(Composite global temperature anomaly data from NOAA for 2013 through 2015 provides evidence of the early start to the formation of a possible superstorm-producing North Atlantic cool pool. Image source: Climate Crocks.)

How might this cool pool become such a powerful storm generator? It could well be thought of as an ironic matter of atmospheric and ocean physics. Ironic in the sense that overall global heating produces a severe weather hazard in the form of a large area of cool ocean surface water.

Increased warming of the Earth results in more rapid warming at the poles, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. In turn, this polar amplification sets off a number of feedback loops in which ice in Greenland and West Antarctica begin to melt faster and faster. The ironic atmospheric relationship to large slabs of ice sliding off the great ice sheets and into the ocean begins to come into play. For a thin veil of fresh water from these increasingly massive volumes of melting ice begin to lock more and more heat into the local ocean system.

Over hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, the fresh water begins to cut off the ocean’s ability to ventilate heat into the airs above. As a result, the surface of the ocean and the local atmosphere cools. More heat is shoved into the deeper waters — where it can melt the sea facing glaciers ever more rapidly even as it gets to doing the dangerous work destabilizing carbon stores on the sea bed. Dangerous — not only for its potential to add more greenhouse gasses to the world atmosphere, but also for its ability to develop anoxic dead zones in the ocean depths and to expand those life-killing layers toward the sea surface.

Climate Change’s War Between Hot and Cold — Understanding the Warning Signs

In scientific terms, we call this a stratified ocean state. But in plainer words, we could think of it as a big mechanism for heat exchange and ocean and atmospheric chemistry change.

(Anyone who knows anything about ocean and atmospheric physics should be concerned about this picture. Here we see the April 8, 2016 ocean surface temperature anomaly reanalysis provided by Earth Nullschool and developed from data collected by NCEP and the National Weather Service. Here we see a large swath of Gulf Stream waters ranging from 5-8 C above average temperatures coming into collision with waters in a North Atlantic cool pool ranging from 1-10 C below average. It is the increasing difference in temperature, or thermal gradient, between these two ocean zones that Hansen and others identify as having a high potential for very severe storm generation.)

Changing the ocean’s heat relationship with the atmosphere is bound to alter the weather. And Hansen’s paper points toward a serious risk that this fundamentally altered relationship will result in much more powerful storms. A cooler North Atlantic will collide with all kinds of expanding heat from various regions. A backed up Gulf Stream will warm up — it already has. The tropics will begin to heat up, increasing the temperature gradient between the lower Latitudes and the cool pool in the North Atlantic. Such conditions amp up the atmospheric storm potential by producing an abundance of what storms feed on — very extreme differences in temperatures, related strong winds and atmospheric vortexes, strong south to north and north to south air flows that link the tropics to the pole, and an ever-growing abundance of moisture bleeding off the record warm waters that come into increasing collision with the expanding pool of cold to the north. Such conditions risk the development of extraordinarily powerful storms in this region. Storms the likes of which our civilizations have never seen before. Storms that may leap the boundaries of their formation zones to have far broader impacts.

Hansen, in his paper found evidence that such conditions may well have existed during the last warm period between ice ages around 115,000 years ago. Back then, a huge flush of ice bergs running out from a melting Greenland during the peak period of warmth appears to have produced terrible storms in the North Atlantic. Storms powerful enough to pluck 2,000 ton boulders up out of the sea bed and hurl them 100 feet above sea level before depositing them onto the hills of places like Bermuda and the Bahama islands.

During that period, the rate of warming was slower. So the pace of melt was likely also slower than what we would see due to human warming. The atmospheric changes were thus milder than those we are likely to experience if human warming continues along its current path and sets the dramatic melt and related atmospheric wrenching into motion. Already, we see storms the likes of which history has never seen running into the UK and Ireland, aiming their increasingly powerful winds and rains at Western Europe. Already we see climate change enhanced superstorms. New forms of severe weather. Hellacious mergings of devastating hurricanes with extraordinary nor’easters.

But what we see now is nothing compared to what we will see if Hansen’s research is anywhere near the mark and if human fossil fuel burning continues unabated. What we risk, and what Hansen has warned us about in what he considers to be his most important work of science, is setting off a severe chain of events that includes rapid sea level rise and powerful, powerful storms. In addition, the ocean stratification that is the cause of all this atmospheric and oceanic trouble would set off further consequences not touched on in Hansen’s work — hitting ocean health hard and, likely, liberating more carbon stores from the Earth System to add to the troubles that humans (and particularly the fossil fuel special interests) are already rapidly bringing to the fore.

One final point — the Hansen paper has and will continue to generate a huge controversy in the science. But from the point of view of this threat analyst, there is a high potential for dangerous outcomes similar to those the Hansen paper warns of together with a number of additional troubles so long as the human-forced warming continues. And we already see visible evidence of those kinds of dangerous atmospheric and ocean changes starting to happen now.

174 Comments

Mike

Mike

A year or so ago, someone suggested that we may want to remind ourselves how valuable this blog is to all of us. And they suggested that some of us may want to show this gratitude by clicking on your raven link on the top right of the screen to offer you a donation expressing our gratitude. So, I think it is a good time to remind everyone again that we should not take you for granted. Thank you again Robert. I think we all know how hard this must be for you.

dnem

Cheers, Mike. I was away on travel. Brought along with me a ton of papers/relevant info I feel I need to sharpen myself up for what could be a very intense summer. Looks like a big breath before a plunge to me. Let’s hope it doesn’t end up so rough. We’ll see.

It generates more instability. So, ironically, we may see more twists in the atmosphere to serve as starting points for these systems. That Gulf Stream may also really have an effect. The offshore environment for the US East coast looks like it has become far more conducive for overall strong cyclone development.

Greg

Very glad to hear back from you Robert. On Smith island with the kids right now for first time after our son’s windmill regional competition in Fairfax at GMU. A perfect weekend trip for you taking route 50 across the Bay. Settled since 1608, mostly be Welsh descendants, and evidence of sea level rise and subsidence everywhere and the 20th century largely left behind as we tool around on our bikes and I steel wifi from the local school with just 9 students. Very cold and stormy. Crab fisherman all forced to stay ashore today. “Tradid April for March dis year”

Robert…So glad to have you back..and that you were gone due to travel and not because something bad had happened. Hope you had a grand time..and some much deserved rest and fun. I will be honest, I was one of those here that was beginning to worry.
Cheers.

Cate

Adding my wee welcome back hug—hope all is well. We missed you. We kept breaking our computers on the last post! 😀 You’ve outdone yourself on this one, though. That cool pool scares the bejesus out of me. We’re used to stormy weather out here on The Rock but that thing is just too close for comfort.

Syd Bridges

My jaw dropped when I looked at the NSIDC area uptick this morning, but I compared the last two NSIDC maps and noticed that half the Baltic and part of the Barents Seas had frozen over in a day! This seemed extremely improbable.

I have been watching the development of the Greenland Cold Pool with increasing foreboding. The Age of Storms may be starting now. Coupled with rapidly rising sea levels, the storms may make coastal regions uninhabitable much sooner than most people have predicted. Then I also wonder how well infrastructure will stand up to these more powerful storms, or for that matter many modern dwellings. Not to mention agricultural production.

Cate

This is an old study (2001) on thermohaline circulation and possible shutdown, but still interesting to consider in light of more recent extreme weather events and improvements in data-gathering and modelling.

Mark from OZ

There’s >100 off shore oil rigs in the No Atlantic (NW Europe) currently and over the years, many of them and 100’s of souls have been lost when things go wrong; not to mention the often irreparable enviro damage that results. We know they don’t belong there ( or anywhere for what their presence represents) and the prospective storms forecast may force them to abandon the region– a welcome development!
As an example and testimony to human arrogance( and greed and the pillage mentality), the Mitsu built/ Mobil owned ‘Ocean Ranger’ was built to withstand 190 kph wind and 34 foot waves and was therefore ‘unsinkable’. ( where have we heard that before?). It was most certainly ‘sinkable’; off the Newfoundland coast in1982 along with 84 crew and no survivors. (May their souls rip.)
Analogous to a tall cyclone fence with razor wire and ‘Do Not Enter’ sign, the coming storms may be Nature’s way of saying ‘Stop’ what you’re doing!

Cate

Mark from Oz, ah, the Ocean Ranger…..I remember that storm as if it were yesterday, the morning after the worst night of blizzard and gale of wind anyone could remember—and odd, because it was westerly in an area where our worst storms are always nor-easters. Roads were closed and school was cancelled so we teachers stayed home and watched the news in utter disbelief. It was like watching, much later, 9/11. You just could not believe it. For a population so small and so close-knit, the Ocean Ranger was a disaster of titanic proportions, affecting almost every town in this province. This local song, written shortly afterwards, is now a classic….

Mark from OZ

Many thanks Cate! A beaut song with all the heartfelt emotion / grief that the artist can tap- a ‘classic’ indeed and now traditional; I’ll bet the locals still play it and the youngers wish to learn it.
V1 “Where the sea gull soars and the mighty ocean roars,
When the wind from the North blows so frantic.”
Simple. Honest. True.
Like every one of these tragedies, we always remember those ‘lost’ via the links to those they left behind and as you’ve shown, their memory is till very much ‘here’.

The wobble in Earth’s axis of rotation is a combination of two major components, each with its own cause. One is called the Chandler wobble and is thought to arise because the Earth is not rigid. Another is the annual wobble, related to Earth’s orbit around the sun.

Remove these wobbles, and you are left with an additional signal. Since observations began in 1899, the North Pole has been drifting southwards 10 centimetres per year along longitude 70° west – a line running through eastern Canada.

This drift is due to the changes in the distribution of Earth’s mass as the crust slowly rebounds after the end of the last ice age. But Chen’s team found something surprising. In 2005, this southward drift changed abruptly. The pole began moving eastwards and continues to do so, a shift that has amounted to about 1.2 metres since 2005.

To work out why the pole changed direction, Chen’s team used data from NASA’s GRACE satellite, which measures changes in Earth’s gravity field over time. The data allowed them to calculate the redistribution of mass on Earth’s surface due to the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and mountain glaciers, and the resulting rise in sea level. It correlated perfectly with the observed changes in the mean pole position (MPP).

Chen’s team calculated that the biggest contribution is coming from the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which is losing about 250 gigatonnes of ice each year. Another big factor is the melting of mountain glaciers, which contributes about 194 gigatonnes per year. The contribution from Antarctica adds up to 180 gigatonnes per year, but there is considerable uncertainty here because changes in the gravity field due to Earth’s crust rebounding are less well understood over Antarctica than elsewhere.

It may not be much, but the extreme rain events will be increasing the wobble effect.
It may not be considered major but it is affecting the centrifugal stresses on the Tectonic plates, especially at the actual poles and the equatorial bulge

Abel, maybe those who know the science better don’t consider it major, but I’ll be sincere: for this little veterinarian here that kind of news (the poles shifting!) seems terrifying. It’s difficult to imagine how much ice must be melting to change the weight distribution of Earth in that way.

rustj2015

wili

Cate

Love Stan! and not to sidetrack the thread, but this great Stan song relates perfectly to Arctic melt and to our vision of the North versus the reality of it—especially now that it is to be penetrated by cruise ships and eventually, drill rigs…

– Very well put, Robert. A valuable lesson in ‘real time’ physics and atmospherics.
Cheers.

“… the ocean’s ability to ventilate heat into the airs above.”
“… strong south to north and north to south air flows that link the tropics to the pole… an ever-growing abundance of moisture bleeding off the record warm waters… into increasing collision with the expanding pool of cold to the north.”
“New forms of severe weather. Hellacious mergings of devastating hurricanes with extraordinary nor’easters.”
And the entire last paragraph: “One final point — the Hansen paper has and will…”

Jeremy

“The amount of household solar power capacity installed in the past two months has plummeted by three quarters following the government’s cuts to subsidies, according to new figures.

A fall in solar power was expected following a 65% reduction in government incentives paid to householders, but the size of the drop-off will dismay green campaigners who want take up on clean energy sources to accelerate.

Data published by the energy regulator this week shows there was 21 megawatts (MW) of small solar installed in February and March this year, after a new, lower incentive rate came into effect. By contrast, energy department figures show that for the same period in 2015, 81MW was installed.”

Robert: this is my precursor comment on my Facebook posting of this article: You know those scenes in movies where thousands and thousands of soldiers have left their home base and are marching to make war? The actual war hasn’t happened yet, but it is coming! Well, this is essentially what’s happening across many fronts in the climate change arena right now. The amount of heat that has been caught in our atmosphere is now enough to begin to “supercharge” things. Especially if you’re on the east coast of North America – read this. It is excellently clear and interesting. In brief: The far North has generated incredible warming – much more than the middle latitudes. Greenland is melting its glaciers into the North Atlantic and THAT is creating the setting for unimaginable ‘super storms’ to be generated. Seriously, this is a harbinger of things modern humans have never experienced or seen…its worth a read

The potential arrival of La Niña later this year could prove favorable for Atlantic hurricanes, but the resilient cold blob may work in the opposite direction, according to Klotzbach. “When the far North Atlantic is cold, it tends to force wind and pressure patterns that then cool the tropical Atlantic,” he told me. “We’ve seen a significant cooling of the eastern subtropical Atlantic in recent weeks, and there is the potential that these cold anomalies could propagate into the tropical Atlantic for the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. If this occurs, there is the potential that the hurricane season may not be particularly active.”

PlazaRed

Some people may find this article interesting. Its about the effects of sea level rise in Louisiana. Note that it is not all sea level rise which is causing the problem but that land sinking is also involved.
“Subsidence and sea level rise in south Louisiana.”

Great article as usual. Hansen does a wonderful job. Box didn’t explain how Mediterranean drying is tied in to the cool melt water pool and slowing of AMOC, but he’s great, too. Tan Ivy’s recent Science 4/8 paper on mixed phase clouds holding fewer ice crystals meaning the current models are seriously underestimating the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity and recent satellite data documenting a major increase in Arctic methane emissions leads me to think that we have almost certainly already crossed the tipping point for the shut down of the AMOC. Massive disaster and death are rushing at us.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we should slow down our rapid decarbonation of our global economies. It can and will get still worse, but life on Earth above microbial is at risk. We must go 100% fossil free as quickly as humanly possible. Today, if possible. Each of us must act as if the lives of our children depended on immediate, massive action, because that is indeed what is at stake.

I think the well-meaning media statements by concerned politicians that the poor are going to suffer the most is seriously misguided. The harm is going to be massive and it is going to seriously affect all of us, even the billionaires of the world.

dnem

“I find the paper reasonably compelling that shortcomings in how certain key cloud processes are treated could well be leading to an overestimation of the ability of cloud feedbacks to ameliorate global warming,” says Dr. Mann in an e-mail interview. “There is indeed other recent work that makes a similar case.”

But he describes the study as more of a ” ‘proof-of-concept’ than a precise estimate of the impact of the effects studied,” pointing out that the authors themselves are hesitant to commit to any definite figures in relation to temperature rises.

Yet the study does give a range.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013 estimated climate sensitivity – the increase in global temperature as a result of a doubling in atmospheric carbon dioxide – to be within a range of 2 to 4.7 degrees Celsius.

Storelvmo and her colleagues push that upper bound to as high as 5.3 degrees Celsius, based on their new findings.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again;
Those that laughed at the movie The Day After Tomorrow (2004—-12 years ago!) will not be laughing now. Yes, we all agree they took artistic license with fictional/dramatic/unscientific scenarios BUT the premise of the movie is proving to be terrifyingly true.
This is what Stefan Rahmstorf had to say about TDAT shortly after its release: (http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/tdat_review.html)

“The film presents an opportunity to explain that some of the basic background is right: humans are indeed increasingly changing the climate and this is quite a dangerous experiment, including some risk of abrupt and unforeseen changes. After all – our knowledge of the climate system is still rather limited, and we will probably see some surprises as our experiment with the atmosphere unfolds. Luckily it is extremely unlikely that we will see major ocean circulation changes in the next couple of decades (I’d be just as surprised as Jack Hall if they did occur); at least most scientists think this will only become a more serious risk towards the end of the century. And the consequences would certainly not be as dramatic as the “super-storm” depicted in the movie. Nevertheless, a major change in ocean circulation is a risk with serious and partly unpredictable consequences, which we should avoid. And even without events like ocean circulation changes, climate change is serious enough to demand decisive action.”

Sadly most scoffed at the film and did not have the critical thinking abilities necessary to glean the main message of the film: we are irrevocably altering the atmosphere that will portend major climate catastrophes all over the world in the not so distant future.

We are seeing those catastrophic events now. Unfortunately Stefan was not correct when he
stated “it is extremely unlikely that we will see major ocean circulation changes in the next couple of decades (I’d be just as surprised as Jack Hall if they did occur)”.

Caroline: If you’re interested in screenplays that depict likely climate change scenarios in the not-too-distant-future, I’ve written one. A connection is shopping it around L.A. right now. After writing a bunch of climate articles for Huffington Post, I got frustrated with the lack of traction and just thought, “What the hell, maybe a big screen blockbuster will get more attention.” I love feedback from interested folks, so if you’d lake to give it a look, email me: dagold56@hotmail.com

Joni Grady

Andy in SD

Isle de Jean Charles, the mostly French-speaking, Native American community where Billiot lives, once was about the size of Manhattan. Now, it’s about a third of Central Park.
The coastal island has lost 98% of its land since 1955.
And what’s left is going fast.

islandraider

From NASA:
Record annual increase of carbon dioxide observed at Mauna Loa for 2015

Excerpt:
“The annual growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii jumped by 3.05 parts per million during 2015, the largest year-to-year increase in 56 years of research.

In another first, 2015 was the fourth consecutive year that CO2 grew more than 2 ppm, said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network.

“Carbon dioxide levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of thousands of years,” Tans said. “It’s explosive compared to natural processes.”

If CO2 emissions are declining & we are getting record increases in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere that would suggest that positive feedbacks may be kicking in that are overwhelming our ability to control atmospheric CO2. While El Nino is may be partly to blame, I think we are seeing feedbacks being expressed as well. Uncharted territory awaits! Faster & faster…

(also note how often the word “faster” or some combination of synonymous phrasing was using in the above RS article.)

dnem

There are lags involved and I’m not sure we would expect to see the (supposed) peak in energy-related emissions show up at Mauna Loa quite yet. Plus, we’d expect a big pulse at Mauna Loa from the El Nino, so we may well see things slow down a bit in the CO2 numbers over the coming months (and years?). But the Keeling Curve is certainly a truer gauge of what is really going on in the atmosphere (and with sinks and feedbacks) than any IEA reports about emissions. Guess we’ll have to stay tuned.

I had to laugh and do an eyeball-roll at the following quote. The force is with the FF industry…who knew🙄

“…And we must not ignore the misguided campaign to ‘keep it in the ground’ and hope it will go away. For too long the oil industry has been portrayed as the Dark Side, but it is not. It is a force, yes, but a force for good.”

Yes, I think that’s right. For once, there’s an imbalance in our favor–not much spending required to mount a divestment campaign that really cuts into the value of the hundreds of millions of dollars the fossil fuels industries spend each year on image advertising.

KOROR, Palau: Drought-stricken Palau could dry up completely this month, officials warned on Monday (Apr 4) as the Pacific island appealed for urgent aid from Japan and Taiwan, including shipments of water.

The tiny country of about 18,000 people declared a state of emergency last month, the latest Pacific island nation to do so as one of the worst ever El Nino-induced droughts in the region worsens.

An NEC report prepared for President Tommy Remengesau offered a bleak outlook for the already-parched country.

“Based on the current water level and usage rates, and assuming conditions persist unabated, a total water outage is likely to occur in the next two to three weeks,” it said.

Drought intensifies statewide with ‘extreme’ conditions on Hawaii Island
…
The entire state is being impacted by the drought, but Hawaii Island is being hit the hardest. Extreme drought areas on the Leeward side of the island just popped up on Thursday.

On Oahu, brush is dry, and it’s a fire risk to properties. Just last month, firefighters battled a brush fire on the slopes of Diamond Head.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin of the Federal District Court in Eugene, Oregon, decided in favor of 21 young plaintiffs in their landmark constitutional climate change case against the federal government. Judge Coffin ruled Friday against the motion to dismiss brought by the fossil fuel industry and federal government.

The court’s ruling is a major victory for the 21 youth plaintiffs, ages 8-19, from across the U.S. in what Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein call the “most important lawsuit on the planet right now.”

These plaintiffs sued the federal government for violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property, and their right to essential public trust resources, by permitting, encouraging and otherwise enabling continued exploitation, production and combustion of fossil fuels.

“This decision is one of the most significant in our nation’s history,” plaintiffs’ attorney Philip Gregory said.

“The court upheld our claims that the federal government intensified the danger to our plaintiffs’ lives, liberty and property. Judge Coffin decided our complaint will move forward and put climate science squarely in front of the federal courts. The next step is for the court to order our government to cease jeopardizing the climate system for present and future generations…http://ecowatch.com/2016/04/09/climate-change-case/

“The debate about climate change and its impact has been before various political bodies for some time now. Plaintiffs give this debate justiciability by asserting harms that befall or will befall them personally and to a greater extent than older segments of society. It may be that eventually the alleged harms, assuming the correctness of plaintiffs’ analysis of the impacts of global climate change, will befall all of us. But the intractability of the debates before Congress and state legislatures and the alleged valuing of short term economic interest despite the cost to human life, necessitates a need for the courts to evaluate the constitutional parameters of the action or inaction taken by the government. This is especially true when such harms have an alleged disparate impact on a discrete class of society.”

– The Court’s take on the various issues in this case are worth a good look.

‘“Plaintiffs are suing the United States … because the government has known for decades that carbon dioxide (C02) pollution has been causing catastrophic climate change and has failed to take necessary action to curtail fossil fuel emissions….

Jonathan haydes

DJ LX

It’s likely that the onset of truly epic superstorms is what it’ll going to take to get folks to take climate change seriously. In my view, getting serious means 1) instituting an ever increasing tax on CO2 emitting energy sources, to encourage conservation and facilitate the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy 2) doing everything we can to humanely slow, and eventually halt, population growth by providing affordable and accessible birth control to all, instituting an aggressive PR campaign promoting the benefits of smaller families, and increasing the status and career opportunities of women worldwide 3) aggressively funding research and development of renewable energy sources like wind, sun and geothermal 4) institute a ban on fake ‘renewables’ like palm oil, ethanol and sugar cane that lead to rain forests being destroyed for palm oil plantations or to grow food to offset the food growing capacity being lost to ethanol (which is an extremely inefficient source of energy). My fear is that our epiphany will come too late. I hope I’m wrong.

We face the same problems Trumps opponents face and they control the media

“Since August, in fact, when many were calling Trump’s entry a clown candidacy, the Dilbert cartoonist was already declaring The Donald a master in the powers of persuasion who would undoubtedly rise in the polls. And last week, Adams began blogging about how Trump can rhetorically dismantle Clinton’s candidacy next.

Adams, mind you, is not endorsing Trump or supporting his politics. (“I don’t think my political views align with anybody,” he tells The Washington Post, “not even another human being.”) And he is not saying that Trump would be the best president. What the Bay Area-based cartoonist recognises, he says, is the careful art behind Trump’s rhetorical techniques. And The Donald, he says, is playing his competitors like a fiddle – before beating them like a drum.

The Manhattan mogul is so deft at the powers of persuasion, Adams believes, that the candidate could have run as a Democrat and, by picking different hot-button issues, still won this presidency. In other words: Trump is such a master linguistic strategist that he could have turned the political chessboard around and still embarrassed the field.

Greg

Cate

This weekend on MSM in Canada: climate change somehow steals the spotlight at the national convention of the NDP, which is taking place in the oil-rich province of Alberta. Alberta recently threw out the Tories who have led them since the days of the dinosaurs and voted in the slightly left-leaning NDP led by Rachel Notley. With the collapse of the oil industry that fuels the entire economy of her province, Premier Notley is now caught between a rock and a hard place wrt reviving the oil industry and has chosen to save her political neck locally by resolving to build new pipelines—much to the horror of her NDP colleagues outside Alberta, of course. Notley’s motto: One does what one must.

Never mind. The NDP is forging ahead with discussing and possibly adopting the LEAP Manifesto, brainchild of Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis (himself of impeccable NDP bloodlines)–which Lewis is even urging the Trudeau govt to adopt, at least in part.

Meanwhile, Trudeau’s spotless image is tarnishing fast as his govt’s waffling—some are calling it double-speak—-on solutions to climate change becomes clear. Canada will be able to afford to keep it in the ground, it seems, as long as we build new pipelines. As someone quipped, The government knows what it has to do to address climate change, and is prepared to do exactly half that.

Kevin Jones

Cate

Ryan in New England

The deeply negative gravity anomaly in the region of the cool pool indicates that the water is denser than normal and sinking at this time. I, too, have been writing about the intensification of storms associated with the increasing heat content of the north Atlantic so I share your general concern about it. The huge amount of meltwater from Greenland apparently did slow deep water formation around the time that Arctic sea ice was making a brief recovery in 2013 and 2014, but deep water formation appears to be going strong right now based on gravity and Mercator Ocean’s analysis.

It’s worth noting that Rahmstorf and others consider SST anomaly measures to be a good proxy of overall AMOC strength. That said, the strength is variable and subject to annual/multi-annual swings. So single year strength is probably not the best indication of an overall trend. We could, for example, focus on the minor sea ice recoveries in the Northern Hemisphere or we could take into account the larger context of a considerable loss of sea ice since the 1920s and steepening since the 1970s.

In the year to year, I think it’s more than likely that we see a variability. But the cool pool is an extraordinary feature as is the juxtaposed extreme positive SSTAs in the Gulf Stream. Both are proxy indicators that overall AMOC strength is far lower than traditional baselines — even if the annual rate is in the process of playing a lagging catch-up.

One final point in relation to SSTs in the North Atlantic — the original concern was that slowing AMOC would have this impact on temperatures, result in wrenching weather changes for the North Atlantic and possibly other far-flung regions. We do have a cool pool. We do have a long term trend of AMOC slowdown RE Rahmstorf and we do have some rather severe weather changes — especially for places like the UK. Since this is probably the start of related pattern changes, signals in some cases would appear to be weak or mixed. However, the larger context points to something similar to the climate shifts predicted starting to happen now.

Kevin Jones

According Weather Underground, Kangerlussuaq [Sondre Stromfjord] had 50F for yesterday’s hi. 42F old record for date (1998) Average for date based on data from 1999-present is 22F. Tonight’s lo forecast to be 40F… Currently 57F….13.9C Summertime, and the livin’ is queasy….

– UK: London Underground – ‘The report was funded after Hurricane Sandy swamped the metro in New York City in 2012.’

London Underground
57 tube stations at high risk of flooding, says London Underground report

Busy stations including Waterloo, King’s Cross and London Bridge among the most threatened, unpublished review states
…
Most threatened are some of the capital’s busiest stations, including Waterloo, King’s Cross and London Bridge, and the report warns of potential dangers to passengers. “The rapid nature of flooding events often produces high safety consequences,” it reads. The report was funded after Hurricane Sandy swamped the metro in New York City in 2012.

The London tube network is one of the busiest in the world, with more than 3.5m passenger journeys a day between 270 stations across the city. As well as the risk to passengers, closures and delays result in multimillion-pound losses for the tube and the wider economy.

– Antibiotics
Investors urge fast food and pub chains to act to reduce farm antibiotics
…
Experts believe the drugs’ use in farm animals is linked, via the food chain, to the spread of antibiotic-resistant infections in humans. The chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, has described an “apocalyptic scenario” in which people going for routine operations die because antibiotics are no longer effective at stopping infections.

The really scary thing is the heavy use of the strongest/last resort antibiotics on livestock in China. (I cant remember where I read that, so unfortunately I don’t have a link, sorry.) Between that issue and the amount of coal being burnt in China, it seems like the main battles for the future of humanity are really taking place there.

…
A new study from scientists in the Environmental Defense Fund’s Oil and Gas program examined the most common sites for methane leaks at oil and gas pads nationwide. A team of researchers partnered with Gas Leaks Inc., a company that uses infrared technology to inspect well pads, to fly a helicopter over thousands of pads in seven regions in the United States.

In total, the researchers flew over 8,000 pads in areas saturated by drilling, including North Dakota’s Bakken Shale and the Marcellus Shale in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
…
Results of the study, accepted on Tuesday in the Environmental Science and Technology journal, show that 90 percent of leaks from nearly 500 sources sprung from the vents and hatches, or doors, on gas tanks.

Ryan in New England

Wonderful news. An Oregon judge has ruled that a lawsuit suing the federal government for allowing climate change can go forward. The suit was filed by youngsters who feel they have a right to a livable climate, and that the government has betrayed future generations by not doing anything to limit CO2 pollution.

At the very least the arguments and evidence will be put up in a court of law.

Buy shares in popcorn

REPLY
Cricket 18 hours ago

Where does the madness end? If they can sue and win over this then people will start suing because we are in Syria, Over cap and trade because it will be a system that enriches the world elite while putting all the burden on the taxpayers. Because our immigration laws are ignored. That we pay dues to a foreign organization (U.N) or that we are part of a foreign army (NATO). I can just go sue happy on my government now.

1 comments
Abel Adamski 16 minutes ago

The case is about AGW and Climate Change and the resultant consequences. As such the case for AGW MUST be proved in a court of law as well as the harmful consequences.

Considering the thousands of lines of evidence and papers and research it will be a long and technical case.

It is the opportunity the deniers have been screaming for to prove the warmists liars and frauds, if they have the evidence. That is why EXXON and the F/F interests fought to have this case heard , oh wait

– Mechanized farming: “… lose thousands of years of soil.”
– [And the microbes in the soil.]

– From Dahr Jamail’s 0404 ‘Agriculture on the Brink’

…. Professor Michael Bomford, a Ph.D. in plant and soil sciences and a fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, told Truthout.
For years, Bomford has been worried about how our dependence upon oil to feed ourselves on a global scale has been causing soil degradation and depletion, as well as driving up food prices over the long run.
“Clearing land for farming releases carbon into the atmosphere and that contributes to climate change,” he explained. “Then by farming it, using cultivation causes soil to be lost in wind and erosion, and that topsoil took thousands of years to form. One extreme weather event can cause us to lose thousands of years of soil.”

– Equally damaging and insidious, on a smaller scale, are the more numerous power blowers that are loosed upon the landscape.

Tornado and hurricane force columns of air, often at extremely hot temperature, destroy or disperse all in their path — insects, leaf litter, microbes, etc. are blasted into nothingness by fools.

– When used on asphalt, streets, and parking lots — the blowers disperse, or pulverize, toxic material of all sorts.
These machines destroy by making solids smaller and less visible as they waft in the air for a few minutes before settling back down where they were, or just falling randomly nearby.
All for cosmetic purposes — that’s all. And fossil fuel dependent too.

– By my measure, a culture or society, which accepts this in their midst on a daily basis — are pretty much beyond hope.
OUT

– FF CC denial malfeasance – good explanation here of ‘“facsimile” science, that mimics and parades as the real thing.”

– Speaker: Climate denial is more about marketing than the facts
…
Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science and affiliated professor of Earth and environmental studies at Harvard University, co-authored “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.”

Speaking at the Schoonover College of Communication, Oreskes cited several consultants who worked for tobacco companies to sow seeds of doubt around the dangers of smoking, who then later worked for organizations promoting climate-change denial.

“So we realized doing our research that it was not remotely possible these men didn’t understand science,” Oreskes said. “This was not a problem of scientific illiteracy.”

Abel Adamski

Ministers have quietly removed funding for two groundbreaking efforts to combat climate change.

The 12-year-old Central Point of Expertise on Timber — one of the world’s first public sector agencies to boost sustainable wood and palm oil buying — has been axed, while the government has also withdrawn the UK’s membership of a body that promoted research into cleaner use of coal.

Kevin Jones

NSIDC notes they’re having issues with sea ice index satellite data. (Therefore Cryosphere Today as well, it appears). Here’s hoping it’s fixable and not an aging problem. Hell of a time to be flying blind over this melt season….

The study suggests recorded cases of Parkinson’s, based on medication use, are 78% higher than average in Buloke, 76% higher in Horsham, 57% higher in Northern Grampians and 34% higher in Yarriambiack.

The four areas all have increased farming production of pulses including chickpeas, broad beans, lentils and vetches – as well as barley.

While the prevalence is higher, the number of people with the disease was still less than 1% of the overall population.

The research did not investigate pesticides directly, but it has been known for decades that high doses of some pesticides can cause Parkinson’s disease in laboratory conditions.

Overseas studies have identified risk factors for Parkinson’s include living in rural areas and exposure to herbicides, pesticides and bore water.

Parkinson’s is a chronic and progressive neurological condition that affects the nervous system and alters co-ordination and movement.

Abel Adamski

UP TO $225,000 (NZ$250,000) worth of scientific equipment might have just been lost with a pair of massive ice bergs which have broken off the Antarctic coastline.

Just as upsetting to the researchers which were using it is the prospect of also losing an entire year of crucial data, which was helping assess the subtle impacts of climate change on the frozen continent.

Scientists at the National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) had attached an underwater mooring to the Nansen Ice Shelf at Terra Nova Bay, about 285 km from Scott Base, carrying a range of instruments that measured current, temperature and salinity.

But yesterday, NIWA oceanographer Dr Craig Stevens was monitoring satellite images when he spotted two separate ice bergs – each between five and 15km long as much as 100m thick – had broken off the ice shelf.

With them may have gone the mooring, which was into its second year of operation and was to be recovered early next year.

Another NIWA oceanographer, Dr Mike Williams, said the runaway ice bergs were so deep they could catch the top of the mooring and drag or break them if the icebergs drift over the mooring.

So many questions when looking at that horrifying number (409.34). How fast will CO2 continue to rise? How much will that number go down (if it does go down) after May peak?
How much of this is related to methane?

Kevin Jones

June

In 2015 the highest weekly ESRL value was 404.11 in early May and the lowest was 397.20 in late September. By early November the weekly value had already hit 400, and it’s just gone up from there. And we have another few weeks of increases to go. I’m running out of words to describe my sense of alarm.

Syd Bridges

If you want the unbelievable, today’s NSIDC SIE map and area graph can suffice.

Though I’m sure they are totally believable at the Fartland Institute, WUWT, the Heritage-of-Genocide-and-Slavery Foundation, the Republican Party, and Papa Cruz’s megachurch. That uptick in the SIE graph is not an instrument error, it’s the Hand of the Lord.

Meanwhile, you shouldn’t worry about the Greenland temperatures; they’re all due to faulty instrumentation. Or more likely, it’s the Librul Climate Conspirrassy.

Secret conversations between American diplomats show how a growing water crisis in the Middle East destabilized the region, helping spark civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and how those water shortages are spreading to the United States.

Classified U.S. cables reviewed by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting show a mounting concern by global political and business leaders that water shortages could spark unrest across the world, with dire consequences.

Many of the cables read like diary entries from an apocalyptic sci-fi novel.

Andy in SD

In Canada, it is becoming a national law to disallow bulk sale / removal of water to another country (specifically the USA). The fear is that under NAFTA, once you sell an item to another partner nation, by law you can not stop doing so.

There are water rich areas in Canada where the bulk water sales would have a buyer immediately across the border. Canada has even threatened to divert the Columbia River from Washington State.

Bill H

Ok, I’ll have a go at trying to cheer us all up a little with a post on the subject of energy storage. Robert’s been posting from time to time, notably on Tesla’s battery development, and their recent domestic battery unit to help people store energy from their domestic generators is certainly grounds for hope. Battery storage looks as if it will continue to fall in price, but there are also encouraging developments in other storage technologies, which I think will be ultimately work out cheaper.

One to watch is Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES), which takes the better known Compressed Air Energy Storage to its limitating case. Electricity from the grid is used to liquefy air, which then powers Rankine (piston) engines as it re-vaporises, thus generating electricity. The idea was patented way back in the late 19th century, but has been dogged by very low efficiencies, due to the rapid cooling that accompanies the expansion. About ten years ago an Englishman called Peter Dearman, while tinkering in his garage, came up with the solution of adding antifreeze to the vaporising air, ensuring something close to constant temperature (isothermal) expansion, and greatly improved the efficiency. The idea was taken up by a number of universities, and a company called High View has been running a pilot 250 kW power station using the technology, with efficiencies of greater than 50%. Now a 5 MW station is being commissioned, and, any day now, will start providing significant grid balancing.
Compared with battery storage, the LAES plant lifetime is expected to be far longer – of the order of several decades, so potentially considerably cheaper.

Expanding uninhabitable zones. It’s one impact you see with rising temperatures and these potential extreme drought, wildfire, wind and rainfall events. You really start to see it more in the 2-4 C range. But we’re starting to skirt the edge of that now.

James Michael Campbell

Hurricane Andrew was the kick off,followed by the storm of the century,’92,prior,heavy rains were already showing as early as’77-78,thanks David&Charles Koch,thanks Exxon/Mobile,thanks all RW nut jobs(Cruz,corporate TV,wallstreet, big banks,international corporations) not!